A young boy watched his blank television screen with an equally blank stare. Yes, six year old Mail Jeevas was bored. The only movement he made was a small flinch at the sound of leather slapping skin.
Mail frowned as he tried ignoring the yelling happening outside his bedroom door, if you would call the room a bedroom. It only consisted of a single bed, a desk and a television with no service. Mail's parents had never allowed him to watch television programs, so he invented them as he watched the blue screen. Mail was smart, he wouldn't doubt that. Hell, even his parents acknowledge his smartness, but his father was still the abusive bastard he was. Sighing, Mail turned off the television and slid off his bed silently.
He gently walked over to the door where the light switch was located and flicked it off. Rubbing his eyes with the back of his left hand, Mail looked out of the dirty window. Squinting slightly, Mail looked at the town clock, which currently read four AM. Mail was never one to go to sleep at six o'clock, like the many other children in the god forsaken French village.
Padding over to his rock hard bed, Mail pulled the covers back and slid underneath them silently.
Hearing a moan, the boy coughed. After every fight, his parents would have sex.
Of course, Mail knew what sex meant. While children were being told that babies were brought to their parents by storks, Mail's parents were blunt. At two years old, Mail asked how babies were born, and his mother said simply as she read her magazine, "You're father fucked me hard."
Mail coughed again at the memory and closed his eyes. Rolling onto his side, Mail traced the stripes on his shirt.
After a few minutes of mindless tracing, Mail heard a gunshot. He sat bolt upright and wildly looked around the room, before realising how dumb he was being.
That gunshot couldn't have come from the next room. Mail knew his father hurt his mother, but he loved her. He wouldn't shoot her. No way in HELL!
Blindly standing up and running over to his door, Mail ripped the door open and ran into the hallway. His hands shook as he felt liquid under his bare feet. Looking down, blood was slowly creeping toward him from a lifeless body half a metre away. Mail's mother stood over his father's dead body with a gun held loosely in her shaking hands. Tears ran down her cheeks as she held the gun up to her temple, her unnatural crimson hair clinging to her face by the sweat.
"Mama!" Mail screamed at the woman. She ignored him. "Mama! MAMA!" Mail screamed again, his brilliant green eyes filling with tears. His parents said they would never die, he knew they would someday, but they were meant to watch him grow up into a man. They couldn't just leave him, he had no one left.
A gunshot brought Mail back to reality and he watched as his mother, the one person he looked up to, slowly fell to the ground. Mail looked at the two bodies and gasped for air. Shaking his head, he slowly backed away. He refused to believe that his mother had killed herself and that she had brought his father with her.
Turning around, Mail ran back into his room and threw open his wardrobe. Grabbing a bag from inside it, he shoved all his clothes in it and pulled on some warm clothes. He ran back out of his room and ran past the bodies bleeding on the floor. He ran out of the house and away from his past. He ran, and ran, and ran until he couldn't run anymore. Gasping for air, Mail collapsed onto the ground in front of a motel and waited for someone to see him lying on the concrete.
Slowly, a pair of footsteps walked towards him. Mail heard the feet, but couldn't see them until the person the feet belonged to were right above him. "Dear me, what do I have here?" An elderly man kneeled down next to Mail and gently turned the boy onto his back. "You do have unnatural crimson hair, don't you fine young man? Tell me, what is your name, and what on earth are you doing out here?" The man asked, a stern look on his wrinkled face. Mail looked at his large white moustache and his gold rimmed glasses.
"I'm Mail, my mama just killed my papa. My parents said I had hair just like my mama." Mail stated as he sat up. The man helped Mail to his feet and stood up. "Would you like to come to an orphanage with me, Mail?"
Mail blinked before nodding slowly. The elderly man smiled and started walking away. Watching the man, Mail ran after him.

A new start…